Seriously distressing news. Matthew Vaughn, the director behind X-Men: First Class will no longer return to shoot the sequel, Days Of Future Past. Instead, Fox is looking to replace Vaughn with long time mutant producer and director Bryan Singer. And we're not sure how to feel about that.

Deadline is reporting that Vaughn has opted out of Fox‘s next X-Men movie. We're not sure why, given that Vaughn has been an integral part in the crafting of the sequel — but now, Fox is hoping Singer and Vaughn will swap roles of producer and director. Fingers crossed Vaughn's absence from the director's chair is not due to studio meddling. Instead of Future Past, Vaughn will direct another film at Fox, based on Mark Millar's comic book series Secret Service.

Does this news strike fear into anyone else's hearts? Vaughn's movie was outstanding. It's not that we dislike Singer's past mutant films, X-Men and X2 were fine. But his latest project Jack The Giant Killer has been plagued with mysterious issues and it's been a very long time since we've seen anything we've liked from Singer. Then again, Singer has been working with the mutant franchise for years and years, and maybe a return to the X-Men is what he needs to get his mojo back.

It's worth noting that this is the second Fox project where the original director has dropped out of the sequel, the first being Rise of the Planet of the Apes, whose director (Rupert Wyatt) is being replaced by Cloverfield's Matt Reeves.